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April 21-27;Who's Calling Whom Weak?

Whoever coined the saying "When the going gets tough, the tough get going" probably didn't have women in mind. But according to an anthropologist, women appear to be far better equipped than men to withstand hardships like extreme cold and famine.

Dr. Donald K. Grayson of the University of Washington studied survival rates among two groups of American migrants -- the infamous Donner Party, which left the Midwest in covered wagons for California exactly 150 years ago this month and were stranded in the Sierra Nevadas for six months by a blizzard, and the little-known Willie Handcart Company, a much larger group of Mormons who left Iowa on foot for Salt Lake City a decade later and met a similar fate in the Rocky Mountains. Although the Mormons were stranded for only five weeks, when the snow hit, they were already weakened by hunger, cold and plain hard work from lugging 250-pound carts.

Mortality was high in both groups. Among the 87 members of the Donner Party, best known for its resort to cannibalism, 40 died: 57 percent of the men versus 28 percent of the women. In the 429-member Willie Handcart Company, 68 died: 25 percent of the men and 8.5 percent of the women.

Women, Dr. Grayson concluded, were protected in large part by biological factors: smaller body size and a lower metabolic rate, which meant they needed less food; more body fat and a higher percentage of it lying just below the skin, which provided better insulation against the cold, and perhaps a reluctance to take risks and act aggressively, which protected the women against accidental deaths.

Noting that women also survive better and live longer in the best of times, Dr. Grayson concluded that it is no longer appropriate to call women the weaker sex. JANE E. BRODY